Casey reviews Biodance and "Diaghilesque"

All of Rochester could have been lit by the energy Biodance exuded at GEVA's Nextstage
last night. The show reminded me of a collection of excellent short stories.
Each unique piece vibrant and well-worked out -- good enough to stand alone, but
even better as a group.

Missy Pfohl Smith, Artistic
Director of Biodance, seems to attract all kinds of dancers
and choreographers from Rochester and beyond to contribute to her projects. Along
with Smith, this one also includes choreography from Heidi Latksy,
Bill Evans, Ivy Baldwin, Jeanne Schickler Compisi, Eran Hanlon, and Courtney
World.

Several of the pieces -- especially "Trapped at Tea,"
choreographed by Compisi and Baldwin, and "Borderline,"
choreographed by World -- operated at almost frantic levels. The first featured Compisi and Smith at some sort of mad tea party. Enclosed
in a stage-wide ring of plastic forks, spoons and knives, the two began next to
each other sipping angrily out of tea cups. More dance theater than pure dance,
the two began throwing cups, leaping onto the furniture, and, finally raining
plastic utensils down at each other. Makes you wonder what's supposed to be in
that tea; I would have brought in a cup myself if I'd known. In any case, the
choppy, truncated movement well-expressed a state of anxiety yet with plenty of
humor thrown in.

"Borderline" was even more tumultuous. Performed by Laura M.
Regna, I'm guessing the piece is about the horrific pushing and pulling you
must experience if you have borderline personality disorder. Regna moved as if
possessed, flailing her limbs and jerking backwards and forwards in a
somewhat-marionette fashion. Regna is a lovely dancer and was able to maintain
clean lines and a strong flow of movement in spite of the manic energy trying
to control her.

"Coaptation" was different from any
of Hanlon's work I've seen so far. Faster and with more blatant outward energy,
yet with a characteristic eerily beautiful quality, it featured dancers Compisi, Kathy Diehl, and Julie Schlafer Rossette as sweat-shirted, aggressively-moving women
who seem distressed over something -- perhaps, even hunted. I found the movement
to have something of a martial arts type feel, yet there are respites of
poignancy as well, for instance in the hovering birdlike-stances the dancers
sometimes freeze into.

The darkness of the initial pieces was diffused by the
premiere of Smith's "A Moment of Silence," danced by Allie Alletto.
Created in Corfu, Greece, this past July, Smith describes the piece as a
meditation of hope and peace. Indeed, its repetitive wavelike motion before an
aqua background summons a sense of serenity and then, as physically expressed
by the dancer, a start toward some sort of realization.

Also to be noted, "Scherzo," by Evans, offered a
lighthearted, large group work set to music by Johannes Brahms. The work combines
rhythm, humor, and solid dancing and got the audience smiling along with the
dancers.

A fair portion of the full house at Biodance
seemed to stay at NextStage for "Diaghilesque",
a reimagined presentation of Ballet Russe gems by New
York City dance company Kinetic Architecture. This is
the type of show the Fringe Festival is meant to nurture: brave, unique works
that are a powerful contrast to your run-of-the-mill theater experience. The company
uses classic works by the Ballet Russe (Russian
Ballet) which became prominent at the beginning of the 20th century as a
jumping off point to explore transgender issues, feminism, abuse, and primal
sexuality. And, for the majority of the show, the dancers are completely nude.

The program guide warns mature audiences only; still, I was
not prepared for this. Honestly, I initially spent a fair amount of time
studying the dancers' bodies -- which are beautiful. After adjusting, I
appreciated the honesty that comes with nudity. The dancers had already disclosed
all to us, in a way, so everything they created on stage seemed imbued with a
raw honesty. The vulnerability of heaving ribcages, trembling buttocks, and
hard nipples gave a poignant sensuality to what they performed. Plus, it was
awesome to clearly see the lines of their bodies as they moved since they are
highly talented dancers, combining classical ballet with contemporary and a
heavy dash of burlesque.

At the heart of the show is Choreographer Faux Pas Le Fae, a transgender performance artist who both performs and
guides us through the different pieces through (often hilarious) narration. Le Fae was superb in the rendition of 'Afternoon of the Faun,'
immortalized back when by Nijinsky. Clad in a feathery skirt and leather corset
for most of the piece (Frankly, I can't remember if the clothes stayed on for
this one or not), there was both campiness and a deep poignancy to the work.

My favorite piece, however, was "Firebird" in which the title
character is portrayed by two different women. The women were topless but wore
lacy red underwear and masks. Beginning with Johnny Cash and "Ring of Fire" and
moving through The Doors' "Set the Night on Fire" and a slew of other songs
filled with longing and lust, the women chased and wooed each other with both
bravado and tenderness. Hot.

In This Guide...

Combining aspects of a flash mob, performance art, and
historical ghost walk, the wonderfully eerie "Spoon River Rochester"
adapts the text of Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon River Anthology" with a cast of
over 150 actors (including Mayor Lovely Warren) delivering poems from the work,
each one an epitaph of a single resident of the titular, fictional small town. Dressed all in white and shades of gray, faces painted pale,
each holding a single candle, the performers are certainly striking to look at.

I only know a few words of Spanish, but I really enjoyed "Chocolate
Casi Amargo,"
("Chocolate, Almost Bitter"), a one-act written and directed by Candide
Carrasco and presented Saturday afternoon on the TheaterRocs
Stage at Xerox Auditorium. The play has no plot to speak of, it's just a
late-night conversation between a long-married couple, Isabel (Elena Nápoles Goldfeder) and Francisco
(Rubén Lorenzo Gómez).

Created and performed by Bronwyn Sims of Strong Coffee Stage
Company, "Moment of Impact" is a strange, multimedia, one-woman show
that explores how trauma experienced and tragedy witnessed can change the
trajectory of a life. Inspired by real events, the story is told through the
creative use of a sparse set, theater, dance, and aerial acrobatics.

Experiencing Garth Fagan Dance perform is a little bit
like coming home, especially when you live in Rochester where the cutting edge
contemporary dance company (now in its 44th year) also resides and works. Familiar dancers, familiar pieces, familiar Fagan -- both wise and jocular in
his comments and anecdotes.

The second social media-centric comedy show of my Fringe
Festival experience this year, "140 Characters or Less: A Twitter Comedy
Show" delivered the #funny. Hosted by comedian Dario Josef with a rotating
cast of local stand-ups, the show shares some DNA with Comedy Central's popular
"@midnight" program -- mixing Twitter-based humor with traditional stand-up
comedy.

The final Fringe Festival performance of "Merged II"
was presented on Wednesday night at Geva'sNextstage. This deeply moving and visually stunning series
of performances was a fantastic celebration of the human body's capabilities to
strive and express and explore and persevere.

If you're not quite ready to say goodbye to summer, slip on
your flip-flops and catch one of the remaining performances of "The
Cougar and the Cabana Boy" at Xerox Auditorium. This original
musical by Dresden Engle and J. Daniel Lauritzson
features a very agreeable cast and a story as light and colorful as the beach
balls that get thrown around in one of the big numbers.

CITY Newspaper's second annual trivia night at the Rochester Fringe Festival featured 17 teams competing at 5 rounds of questions about Rochester, the Fringe, and weird-knowledge trivia. Questions ranged from disco-song-origins, to fill-in-the-blank limericks on notable Rochesterians, a visual round of local logos, and a test of knowledge on the history of the Erie Canal.

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You might have assumed that the competition for the seats on City Council was locked up in the Democratic Primary in June. Rochester’s such a heavily Democratic city that the party’s primaries are considered the real election. But Green Party candidates Alex White, Chris Edes, and David Sutliff-Atias strongly disagree. White in particular bristles at the idea that he’s running as a third-party candidate.
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